News in the Channel - January 2023

PRODUCT NEWS

Scality ships RING9 data storage solution

Scality has launched RING9, the ninth generation of its RING scale-out file and object storage software, which allows IT teams to build and run a hybrid- cloud data storage infrastructure with higher performance and efficiency. RING9 is built on major investments in RING that enables IT teams to: l Fully leverage flash media through tiering and dynamic data protection policies l Modernise monitoring stack with Prometheus tools and APIs l Streamline integration with API extensions to ecosystem partners such as Veeam and VMware Cloud Director. With these new capabilities, RING9 further enhances and simplifies scale-out file and object storage for enterprises building private and hybrid cloud storage services with comprehensive AWS S3 and IAM compatibility. Building on proven enterprise and service provider deployments since 2010, RING9 enhancements are focused on high performance and storage efficiency. RING9 augments its use of the latest generations of flash media through the Storage Accelerator, a powerful multi-level tiering capability. This enables dynamic tiering and data protection policies for ultra- fast IO to hot storage tiers via low-latency NVMe flash — with automated movement of data to increasingly more cost-effective tiers on lower-cost flash, such as quad-level cell, or on traditional hard disk drives. These enhancements expand the addressable markets and use cases for RING9, and enable IT teams to address Tier 1, latency-sensitive workloads in media streaming, medical imaging and big data

analytics that previously required a separate resource. In addition, RING9 brings monitoring into the modern cloud-native data centre, with the integration of a new stack based on Prometheus and AlertManager, a new comprehensive UI dashboard with user actionable alerting. In addition, the Scality Cloud Monitor now enhances remote monitoring and observability for both customers and Scality’s premium Scale Care Services support offerings. RING9 also streamlines the integration of its ecosystem partner products into a customer’s architecture, with support for: l New APIs for enhanced monitoring, reporting and data placement in solutions from ecosystem partners such as Veeam and others l Enhanced VMware vCloud integration, including production use in existing real-world service provider deployments l More comprehensive AWS IAM-compatible bucket policies to tighten security and access control. “As IT teams embrace the modern stack architecture, they need solutions that eliminate challenges in enterprise data management and storage in the hybrid cloud,” said Paul Speciale, chief marketing officer at Scality. “Scality RING9 represents a major step change for the entire storage industry. Users gain improvements in storage efficiency through internal flash-to-disk tiering and dynamic data protection policies. For modern cloud-based data centres, RING9 fits naturally into the monitoring and observability ecosystem with support for Prometheus and Elastic Cloud. RING9 expands the addressable market and use-case workloads for RING further into the high-performance arena.”

Paul Speciale chief marketing officer

scality.com

CityFibre takes the sting out of wayleaves

CityFibre, the UK’s largest independent full fibre platform, has launched a new process that reduces the need for wayleaves. After listening to partner feedback, CityFibre created a new process called Permission to Work (PtW), which gains approval at the point of order instead of putting it into a wayleave process by default. Since launching the process back in July, the average cycle time for CAT 3 and 4 orders has been reduced by 60%. Alongside civils, cabling and splicing are also required for CAT 3 and 4 orders. CAT 3 is estimated to be less than 75m, while CAT 4 is over 75m or requires a network upgrade. “We’ve listened to feedback from partners and recognised that wayleaves are a key source of frustration,” said Andrew Wilson, sales director – Wholesale Channel at CityFibre. “So, we’ve challenged

these existing processes and worked proactively to come up with a better way of doing things. “The new PtW process is game-changing. I really can’t stress enough how significant this is for our partners. By adopting this process, partners can reduce the time between an order being placed and an invoice being raised. We encourage every partner to adopt it and see the benefits first-hand.” By using the PtW process, customers could avoid the need for external solicitors and legal representatives needing to be involved, making the order journey much smoother and less costly. The process is available for all on-net (CityFibre based) Ethernet orders. A ‘Permission to Work’ form is signed by the end user placing the order. Ideally this happens at the time of order, prior to provisioning or at the point of survey.

Andrew Wilson sales director – Wholesale Channel

cityfibre.com